Sometimes you just write a line that you’re so proud of you want to go out and buy cigars and hand them out to every stranger you happen to meet. This is such a line:
It’s from a story (Part Two of a story to be honest) posted on Tabulit (my last post explains what this site is). I think this line comes from something my wife once said. She may have uttered this line exactly, I’m not sure, she is prone to saying things like this, but I don’t know if she says anything this weird. Whatever, it’s almost a throw away line but I’m proud of it. Weird things make writers happy. Or weird things make weird writers happy.
It’s been a while. Stuff has been happening just not here. So this came out today:
This is from a short story (Part One of a short story) called Wild Horses (link) that has been posted on a new site called Tabulit, a literary venture that sells short stories and hands over the majority of the money to the author. The vast majority. It’s a start up so we’ll see how it goes.
I have a new agent as well. She is based in London. (You can see who she is on the Contact page.) The story of how we “met” is very modern and one day I will tell it. Yes it involves Twitter. I have a new agent because my next novel is almost done. Almost. I probably have another pass to go. But it’s done enough that I’ve started research for #3. All this means is I’m buying a bunch of books.
Also Garry Shandling died today. He was only in his 60s. He was one of the funniest people of the last hundred years. This isn’t even remotely an exaggeration. His comedy defined much of what we find funny on television (especially) today. From where I sat (and I was always sitting in front of the television if he was on it) he seemed like some kind of amazing genius, gentle and cutting all at once. If you don’t know his work, I strongly suggest you search it out.
(This episode of Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is, now, a little uncomfortable to watch – but still.)
Everyone thinks their voice is awful and I’m “everyone” too so I think my voice is awful. It must be hard for singers. I was on a podcast recently and I talked about my writing, restaurants in Montreal, and my day job. It’s not a must listen or anything, but it’s a surprisingly entertaining 40 minutes. Surprising because I listened to it and didn’t want to hurt myself. The sponsor of the podcast? Moishe’s. Not just Montreal’s finest steakhouse but one of the finest in the world. I mean that. I’m also linking to a story (in French) that Montreal’s LaPresse ran over the Christmas holidays on their app, and then on their website. The photo of me on the app is much much better than the photo of me on the website. I’m frankly a little (a lot?) appalled by the photo of me on the website. I’d have preferred listening to the interview, let’s put it that way.
David Bowie never stopped. He was an artist in the sense that he couldn’t shut it off, in that every single thing he did was bathed in multiple levels of meaning. He was David Jones. Who created David Bowie. Who created Ziggy Stardust and Major Tom and Alladin Sane and The Thin White Duke. He never stopped. Blackstar was written and produced while he knew he was dying and to listen to it now is to realize he knew and that he was telling us.
The foreign minister of Germany thanked him for helping in reunifying the country. Imagine the transcendent nature of your art to be thanked by a government official for aiding in the creation of your state.
Long before Nike made it a slogan, David Bowie just did it. He did what he wanted. But strategically, calculated, every move the result of much thought. Lots of art. David Bowie was an artist before anything. He created things. He created characters and worlds. He created life.
Art teaches us what it means to be alive. Right? (and look at this crazy photo – that’s just some of his progeny)
I’m not so ambivalent about reviews now, not with the French version of my book, at least. Because the book is old and the reviews aren’t going to drive me so crazy. And so here’s the first review (that I know of) and it’s good! If not great. And speaking of Attends-moi, I’ll be at Montreal’s Salon du Livre signing copies of the book. Venez me voir!
I’ve decided to add some stuff to Medium. Like I’m not content to post stuff to ello, I’m going to post excerpts from the novel-to-be to Medium as well. I must be silly.
No sillier than the unbelievably awful and low-point-in-recent-Canadian-history silly Canadian election campaign. But still silly.
I still get interviewed about Twitter. It’s an odd thing, really, I mean most days Twitter feels like it’s on the outs, but then some big news thing happens, and where do you get your news? That’s right. Twitter. At least I do. (The image above is from someone’s Twitter stream and it’s the best thing I saw that day but has since stopped being the best thing I saw because it’s no longer “that day” but still…I’m not pregnant.) Anyhow, the Q&A is pretty good. And when I say pretty good I mean I don’t sound like an ass. My bar is set low. Like real low.
And it feels awesome (literally – the matte finish is silky). It’s odd to hold your own book and to not have read it. But the French version of Waiting for the Man will be published next month (it launches this week) and I’m kind of thrilled by it. Mostly because as a Quebecois the idea of the translation, and that it was translated locally (as opposed to France) was, and is, important. Les Editions Marchand De Feuilles is a lovely, smart, fiercely independent local publisher. And the translation, by Daniel Grenier (who is a crazy good writer to begin with), is amazing, at least the parts I’ve read. So this book is mine and it’s not mine. The team behind a translation is different, wider, perhaps more anonymous. But the result, one hopes, is the same: more readers, new readers, another conversation, a new dialogue.
The paperback version of Waiting for the Man is out now. Or will be soon, depending on where you live. If this interests you, walk to your local bookstore and buy it. If they don’t have one, ask them to order it for you. Or, of course, you can purchase it online.
Sure, it feels odd in this day to have a paperback version of a book published 18 months after the original, or published at all, and I hope this version does find an audience that the hardcover or the e-version or the audio version (oh, there’s that as well) didn’t find. There’s something almost quaint to the idea, but in the end it’s just another product, now new and improved, with a new cover (also by the great Michel Vrana), a fancy Giller longlist logo, a Q&A with me, some thoughts on stuff that inspired me to write (or inspired me while writing), and questions, for book clubs, I guess, but perhaps just to get you going on your own thoughts about the story, though surely you don’t need something to ask the questions for you; you’re smart enough on your own. You got through my book! Someone should buy you a drink. And respect your space. And not ask so many questions.
You write a book. A while later it is published. A lot of other books are published at the same time. You do some publicity. You travel and read for strangers. You appear in some media. Strangers talk about your book in places you have never been. And then it stops. Your book is on all the shelves it is going to be on, in all the libraries it’s going to be in, the world has moved on, because there are more books to stock, more books to buy, more to read, always more. And that’s fine with you, because you have another book to write. Because there is no cure for writing, you just do it, you don’t think about why, and so the old book becomes, quite literally, “old,” perhaps not forgotten, but of the past.
I remember reading from Waiting for the Man once and thinking “I’m never going to read from this thing again.” I hope that’s true. The last two times I’ve read in public have been from my first draft of the next thing.
This past week, a reminder that your past is there, always, stuck to you, like a shadow. First, a box of this:
That’s the paperback of Waiting for the Man. It comes with something called “BackLit” – so a discussion guide, a Q&A (with me), a list of the things that “inspired” me to write (both pre and during). The book is now available as a hardcover, in e- versions, as an audiobook, and now in paper.
And then, a day later, I received this pdf:
That’s the French version of the book, out this October, published by a great little publishing house in Montréal Les Editions Marchands de feuilles. The translation is by Daniel Grenier (who has a book of his own coming out soon as well). All in one week.
Here’s a zoom in on the cover:
So this book, something I’ve long now seen in my rearview mirror, is back. It still lives. Like the old dudeGilgamesh finds at the end of his travels. The original pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Do we create things to attain immortality? Is that what art is? Or “art”? Or Art? Are we so different from those cave dwellers from thousands of years ago? Or do we just need to create in order to prove something? To be consumed. That we’re delicious. That we exist. That we’re alive. Or were. (Until you consumed us, you monsters.)
A taco is a rental. Delicious, sure, but a rental nonetheless. Fleeting. Sometimes more fleeting than other times.
Everyone thinks their voice is awful and I’m “everyone” too so I think my voice is awful. It must be hard for singers. I was on a 
